If I’d been asked to name the five most prominent Australians I would have to go with Shane Warne, Steve Erwin, Lleyton Hewitt, George Gregan and Brett Lee. Not a picture we South Africans find particularly endearing!

But after spending four years in London followed by two years in Cape Town, with my partner who is Melbournian, it was time to encounter life in Australia and to experience his culture.

Paperwork, paperwork
As always when moving to another country, there was a lot of rather tedious administration to get through. I was amused by how much paperwork I had to go through to get my visa, when a century or two ago I could just have stolen a loaf of bread! In fact, far from being shameful, these days it is rather fashionable for Aussies to lay claim to be a descendant of a convict.

Getting through immigration and customs was almost as harrowing as the paperwork. Being an island nation, Aussies have a real thing about borders — you can’t even take an apple interstate — so they give potential entrants a good once over before they let you in.

SA, Australia: same difference?
I spent my first few weeks sipping on café lattes while pouring over ‘The Age’ newspaper and observing the Aussie way of life. I needed to find out what was of importance in Melbourne (evidently Aussie Rules and absolutely nothing else), Australia and the Asia-Pacific region as a whole. I hadn’t given Australian politics too much thought in the past, besides the ‘Stolen Generation’ and the fact that in 1999 the Australian population voted against becoming a republic, which I’d found somewhat strange at the time.

However much people say that Australia is similar to South Africa, it’s also very different: the closest pub to our house (in a good neighbourhood) has topless bar ‘ladies’; Aussies view their sick leave as an entitlement that must be taken each year; it’s illegal to take passengers in the back of a ‘ute’ (or bakkie to us South Africans); beers are ordered in a variety of different ways depending on what state you are in; and, of course, everybody loves Warnie.

Australian experience rules!
Though the job market seemed buoyant, competition for jobs is fierce as most candidates are seeking to improve on their current position. People seem to move on every two years in search of a better salary, a position with greater responsibility or seniority or just closer to home. There’s no such thing as a job for life or loyalty.

If you can, I strongly recommend allowing some time to settle in before launching into the job market. The vast majority of the candidates will be Australian and have “Australian experience” which, surprisingly for a migrant population, holds particular weight in the employment process. Some of the many differences between South Africa and Australia are rather subtle and it’s good to be aware of these before getting involved in the interview process.

Any homesickness was quickly quelled by the Qantas TV advertisements for the rugby world cup showing ‘Big Joe’ sitting in the parched South African veld, the Aussie voiceover stating that Joe was ‘sitting under the shade of a coolibah tree’. With hindsight, Joe was actually far more likely to have been leopard crawling buck-naked through Kamp Staaldraad but perhaps the marketing department at Qantas didn’t feel that this image would suit their corporate identity.

After an extensive, and lengthier than I had initially hoped, search for a job I accepted a position working in marketing, gaining Australian experience and earning the dollars that pay for the lattés.

I have been living in Melbourne for just short of 18 months now and thankfully haven’t met too many Aussies conforming to the loudmouthed Shane Warne stereotype. Living in Richmond, an inner city suburb in the world’s most livable city, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, I guess I’m not likely to either.